killed her opponent in a trial? They weren’t meant to be to the death, but that didn’t mean fights couldn’t sometimes go too far.
He needed to back away. If they were restraining Ash, they must have had good reason.
But there was something off about her. A slippery, hot pain sliding across the space between them like a vat of spilled oil. He could feel it wash over his feet and slide up his legs. It coated his chest and throat.
For as long as he could remember, he’d been able to sense what others felt. He hadn’t realized it was odd until he’d come to live with the Metaxas, and Elias had caught on to it. Pigstock geoeia, he’d called it—a sense that wasn’t ordinary but could hardly be called earth divinity. Madoc had assumed he was right. People were different, after all, and sometimes divinity manifested in strange ways. A healer in Kyphus claimed he could hear the ore in a Divine person’s blood. One of the priests at the temple could move only sandstone with his geoeia. Madoc’s ability was odd, but his father was Earth Divine, and variations in power were not unheard of.
Besides, pigstock geoeia had its uses. Madoc could read the mood of the baker at the market. If he was feeling generous, Elias would beg for the honey cakes that hadn’t sold at the end of the day. If he wasn’t, they would steal them.
He knew when Ilena had had a good day and when to tread lightly. How to quiet Ava when she had a bad dream. How to sense another fighter’s weakness.
But Ash’s pain was stronger than anything he’d felt before. He’d never sensed the emotions of someone who wasn’t Deiman—that must be why. Whatever the case, he didn’t like it.
“Geoxus asked you to escort the victor of the match back to her people?” Madoc scratched his chin, feeling the rough stubble beneath his fingertips.
“Better than her own god, that’s for certain.” The nearest guard laughed nervously. “You won’t see Geoxus burn up his own fighter, I know that much.”
Ignitus had killed her opponent? Madoc met Ash’s gaze again, and now that oily slickness of her pain was pressing through his pores, weighing heavy in his blood. She blinked rapidly, but it didn’t stop the tears. They rolled down her cheeks, carving new tracks in the dust on her skin.
Ash twisted, breaking free. She lunged toward the arena. In a flash, the centurion had snatched a stone from the ground with geoeia and was swinging it toward the back of her head.
“Stop.” Madoc’s voice echoed in the tunnel. Outside, the shouts of the crowds, already demanding the next match, dropped away.
The centurion lowered the stone.
“Leave her.” Lightning raced through Madoc’s limbs. “I’ll make sure she gets back to her people.”
The soldiers both lowered their spears.
“She’s calm now,” said the closest one. “He’ll take it from here.”
Madoc could hardly believe the change that had fallen over them.
“You should go now,” he said.
The second centurion nodded. “We need to leave.”
They departed without another word.
A strange curiosity had him frowning after them. Talking to those guards had felt easy, more so than it should have. They were centurions, and even if he was a gladiator, he should have been more cautious. But they’d listened to him as though he was the captain of the legion.
He had bigger concerns. He was within striking distance of a Kulan gladiator. An enemy of Deimos. A woman he’d bested less than a day before.
Maybe sending the centurions away hadn’t been such a great idea after all.
But she didn’t attack. Instead, she slumped against the wall, blowing out a shaky breath.
“Are you all right?”
Her chin lifted, dark eyes a sickle of gold and brown in the dim light that came through the front entrance. Madoc deliberately relaxed his arms and hands, hoping she didn’t see too much, and focused elsewhere. Her wild spirals of black hair that had broken free from their binding. The thin cloth wrap around her chest that she wore beneath her armor. The slope of her waist, and the small indentation of her navel.
His gaze shot back to her face, and he swallowed dryly.
“I’m sure your people are waiting at the eastern exit. There’s a tunnel that runs beneath the stands. It should take you there.”
He motioned to the corridor near the arena exit, a cave with a low, arched ceiling. Phosphorescent stones flickered around the bend, bringing a sharp, guilt-coated relief. There were no flames to